


What's In A Name?

by Lucy_Claire



Series: Soul Mark'verse [3]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 15:49:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6711397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucy_Claire/pseuds/Lucy_Claire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When he was twelve, the name <i> BARTHOLOMEW </i> appeared on Oliver Queen's arm.</p><p>He then came to three conclusions: </p><p>1. It was a man’s name.<br/>2. It was an <i> old </i> man’s name.<br/>3. It was better to quit while he was ahead because now he knew he would never find him. </p><p>That was until he did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What's In A Name?

A Soul Mark was a part of life that most people just accepted but most people never got. It was the subject of movies, books, ballads, tragedies and comedies and even crimes and scandals, but the latter part Oliver wasn’t totally aware of until he got older.

See, growing up with a mother like Moira and a father like Robert didn’t leave much room for rosy thoughts and warm, fuzzy feelings. Even when Oliver didn’t know about the extent of their criminal activity, their betrayals and their involvement in so many strange and shifty things, he still knew that they weren’t like most other parents. Primarily was the fact that they couldn’t stand at each other sometimes. He wondered if it was the stress of running Queen Consolidated, being in the public eye and high society, but he later realized that those three things were they got married in the first place.

The first part of him understanding the many uncomfortable rich marriages around him, with all their affairs and divorces, was that most of them had the wrong name on the insides of their wrists. Moira had Jonas and Robert had Pearl. Oliver had never dared to ask what happened to their Soulmates or if they had ever met them, so he kept the idea at the back of his mind until he turned twelve and a name appeared on his arm.

_BARTHOLOMEW_

He came to three conclusions then. One, it was a man’s name. Two, it was an old man’s name. Three, it was better to quit while he was ahead because now he knew he would never find him. When Robert found out that the name had appeared, he didn’t want to know what it was, he just took Oliver aside and explained to him that he was Oliver Queen, a rich, handsome, socialite destined for a life of high-end parties, all-boys private schools and Ivy League universities, and later CEO of Queen Consolidated.

“At first, you need to be free to date for convenience, sleep with them for advantage and then marry for appearances, that’s how relationships go in our world,” said Robert. “The sooner you get that, the easier your life will be.”

Once Moira saw the name on his arm, she got him a silver wristband with his own name carved on it and held his arm very tightly as she clamped the band shut. “I want you to listen to me very closely,” she said to him. “You never take this off, because if you do it will mess up your priorities and expectations.”

“Why?” Oliver asked, tracing the carved grooves of OLIVER that had now been placed over BARTHOLOMEW. All Oliver had seen movies was and heard in songs was that someone’s soulmate was their other half, the second part of the locket that made one whole heart, the one that made the colors turn brighter and the music swell with string orchestral sweeps. Why would that be messy?

“Because it’s a lie,” Moira told him, tapping his arm. “Do you know why I put your name there?”

“No.”

Looking him deep in the eye, looking worn out and tired, Moira spoke with a weighed-down sort of sadness in her voice, the sound of someone that gave up a long time ago. “So you don’t forget who’s more important in life: yourself.”

It was a rude awakening, how he didn’t even get a day’s worth of imaginings and fantasies about who this person was, how they’d meet and what they would be like. He didn’t even get the chance to consider why his Soul Mark was such an old name, he just immediately got whatever inklings or hope shut down by his parents and it wasn’t too long after that he understood the nature of their relationship.

He later found out that his mother was pregnant with Thea when she gave him that talk. When Thea was born with a full head of brown hair rather than the blond of Moira, Robert and Oliver, Oliver gladly took her in his arms and said nothing. After all, what was the point of loyalty if you didn’t even belong to each other in the first place?

Convenience and appearances, just like Robert said. If he should marry it would be for convenience if the girl’s family could benefit their company or appearances if he wanted a trophy to parade around charity functions and dinners or, like his parents, a woman who was his supposed equal.

Of course, they would all be women.

* * *

 

As time went on, Oliver went through several girlfriends and fooled around with the boys in his private schools, never to be serious or acknowledged beyond their darkened corners, closets and locked bedrooms. Samantha Clayton was among the many brief and short-lived girlfriends in the _trophy_ part of appearances and then, on the _equals_ part of appearances, was Dinah Laurel Lance. Of the many, many girls he publicly involved himself with, Laurel was the one Moira would approve of as Wife Material, the one to be the queen of Queen, as Thea jokingly called her.

Oliver was open to the day of Laurel being his quote-and-quote Queen’s consort. She was was closest friend excluding Tommy and had a realistic approve to life, since she wanted to be a lawyer. It wasn’t long after they start dating that it became the first time he openly spoke to someone about Soul Marks.

It was Valentine’s Day, they were both twenty-one and drunk in his off-campus apartment. Laurel had taken off her bracelets and showed him _THOMAS_ , slurring, “Look at this. What am I supposed to do with this? There are over two-million men in the US called _Thomas_. If we divide that by fifty states that’s maybe forty-thousand men per state and if we want to get picky with size and population then the majority could be in Texas, New England and Florida, which would make maybe three-thousand men called Thomas in our area lone.”

“You’re still smart when you’re drunk,” Oliver said, shaking his head to sober himself up a bit. “Why are you still smart when you’re drunk?”

“I’m just reciting the facts.” Laurel sighed, dropping her back against the seat of the couch they were leaning on, looking at her wrist. “It’s just, what are the odds that I’ll find someone with a name this common?”

For the first time in years, Oliver’s brain let itself think of the long and bizarre name he had on his own wrist. He only took off the silver band his mother gave him to clean it, never even bothered to look at the name. He couldn’t afford to.

“Have you maybe narrowed down the number of Thomases in our age group in this state?”

“I have, it’s a bit less than two thousand. But what if he’s not in the state? What if he’s not in the country?” Laurel finally looked at him, a bit alarmed for someone so inebriated. “What if he’s British or something?”

“What if it’s Tommy Merlyn?” Oliver joked.

Laurel snorted and punched his arm, giggling a little. “Yeah, right.”

“I’m serious. I could check what his Soul Mark is for you.”

“It’s probably a Tiffany or an Amber or something,” Laurel scoffed, rolling her eyes.

“Really though, it would be a lot easier finding a Dinah than it is finding a Thomas.” Just like it would be a lot easier finding a Bartholomew than it would be finding an Oliver. There were over sixty-thousand Olivers in the United States, more than half of them young. Younger than Bartholomew probably was.

“Yeah, it would be,” Laurel agreed.

That was the last they spoke of it. Once they had woken up the next day, hung-over and more or less sober, they went on about their life, holding hands, going on dates and being picture perfect. It was all going great until Laurel did the worst thing she could have done for their future arrangement as the next Robert and Moira.

She fell in love with him. And Oliver did not know what do with that information.

He’s had girls fall in love with him, or the idea of him, before. He never cared that much and just distanced himself long enough for them to get over him. He’s even cheated on a few because they never had his name, even if they did Moira his name was the most important. What was loyalty if you never belonged to each other? But now Laurel, the only one of his girlfriends who was an actual friend, someone he couldn’t just ice out and ignore for three months until she got over him, was in loved with him. It meant she expected different things, a different future, one of vivid colors and rising orchestral music, of quoting _The Princess Bride_ and naming a daughter Dinah III, and he couldn’t give that to her.

She deserved her Thomas.

Being young and dumb, Oliver figured the best way to burn Laurel’s feelings for him was to hurt her, and he had chosen her sister for that task. Why? He didn’t really know. He was a self-centered asshole then.

The affair with Sara continued until after he had graduated from college with his pointless but needed MBA to run his family company, and was ready to go on a cruise with Robert. He invited Sara along.

The night before they took off, Thea’s Soul Mark made itself loud and clear on her arm:  _ROY._

Thea raised her arm to him, both confused and excited, asking, “When do you think I’ll find him.”

Not having it in him to do to a twelve year-old girl what their parents did to a twelve year-old boy, Oliver just ruffled her hair and joked, “At the pound, since next to Rex, Buster, Max and Charlie, Roy’s only popular among dogs.”

Thea rolled her eyes at him and hugged her arm to her chest. Oliver hugged her, told her to sleep so she could wake up in the morning and set out to pick up Sara for the cruise.

Then, the unthinkable happened. _The Queen’s Gambit_ crashed and sank, Sara died, Robert died, and Oliver was washed up on the island of Lian Yu. While learning to survive on the island and how to fight for his life from Slade and Yao Fei, Oliver’s silver wristband was broken off and taken away as the last thing he had from home and the one thing between himself and his Soul Mark.

Only once in a while he allowed himself to look at the name, because somehow, it still gave him hope once he started envisioning a real person out there with his name. Was Bartholomew like Laurel, bemoaning the popular name that was his Soul Mark? Had he been waiting for twenty years by the time Oliver was born? Could he have met him at one of Robert Queen’s business parties where men from all over the world attended. Could he be a forty year-old Bart?

Was he looking for Oliver? Waiting?

* * *

 

Five years passed on Lian Yu and by the time Oliver was rescued off the island and brought back to Starling, mission set in his mind and goals set to reconnect with his family and Laurel, Oliver had decided he would wait until he had accomplished his first mission before officially seeking out Bartholomew. After all, there were less than two-thousands of him in the whole of the United States.

As he reintegrated himself back into society, catching up with Thea, who was nearly done with high school, Laurel who was now a lawyer, with Tommy Merlyn and still mourning Sara and his mother, who had become more cold and suspicious since the last time he saw her. The Vigilante’s team grew to have Diggle, his bodyguard, and Felicity Smoak. Over the year, Thea finds a Roy, if not her Roy, Oliver uncovers what’s going on with his mother, Malcolm Merlyn and the Glades and it all ends in near disaster.

Laurel loses Tommy and the Vigilante becomes the Arrow. It all progresses until a CSI from Central City comes sniffing around Starling’s crimes and Felicity nabs him as a last resort to save Oliver when he’s poisoned.

It was at that moment that Oliver felt something…strange for the first time. In his fit of self-defense and panic, Oliver rose off the table and grabbed Barry by the throat. Trying to get his hand off his throat, Barry’s eyes went everywhere as his pale face burned pink with suffocation, but for far longer than it should have, Barry’s eyes stopped on the inside of the hand choking him and grew wider.

The strange feeling of his bare skin being in contact with Barry’s flared in his head and his heart, he felt his blood rush and become hyperaware of his Soul Mark. What was this? Was he embarrassed that Barry, a stranger, a possible danger to his secret identity and mission, saw his Soul Mark when no one but himself and Moira had ever seen it?

Felicity and Diggle yelled at him. Oliver dropped Barry and made sure to threaten him. But by the time Barry’s stay in Starling was up, Oliver sought him out and tried to talk to him, to thank him.

He found Barry talking to Felicity and it sure looked like they were flirting like the pair of awkward nerd they were. Something akin to jealousy twisted in his guts and it wasn’t for Felicity. He has known a while back of her odd little hero crush on him and made sure to say nothing, he had fucked up with Laurel and he wasn’t going to do the same to someone else, so why did he suddenly feel threatened by her?

Barry, with his lanky clumsiness, overeager, easily excited and ready and aiming to please personality said a lot of things, enough that Oliver didn’t want to do too much of a check up on him. Barry was also very good at his job, or what would be his job, meaning he was a lot smarter than anyone gave him credit. So what did it mean when he kept looking for Oliver’s Soul Mark the entire time they talked?

In the end, Oliver managed to thank him for saving his life. Barry went back to Central City and Oliver looked up how many men there were in the US called Barry. Over two-hundred thousand.

He didn’t even know why he wanted to know. He just wanted to find any excuse to see Barry again.

Oliver had spent his entire life doing what was expected of him and dating who was expected of him, namely women. The operation with the Glades was over. Tommy was gone, Robert was gone and Moira was a cold-blooded liar, he didn’t need to impress any of them or their corrupt friends anymore.

By the time he had agreed with himself that he was ready to start dating — date a man, and fuck what anyone else thought, Barry was struck by lightning.

It was only when he had snuck into the hospital to visit him did he find his name on the clipboard hanging at the foot of his bed.

_Bartholomew Henry Allen._

Barry was a Bartholomew. Of course a twenty-three year-old Bartholomew had to go by a nickname.

Reeling from the revelation, he dropped the clipboard and climbed out the window.

Nearly a year later, Oliver got the news that Barry was awake from Felicity. He wanted to rush over there, to see him, to just see with his own two eyes that Barry was upright and breathing and still making a fool out of himself but the man had just woken up from a coma, he wouldn’t want to be ambushed by Oliver. Besides, Oliver didn’t even know what his Soul Mark was, Barry was wearing a band that stayed on his entire stay at the hospital and STAR Labs for privacy’s sake.

Still, Oliver headed to Central City and watched from afar and he came to one ugly conclusion. Barry was infatuated with his foster sister, and he had been for over ten years and it didn’t seem like his single-minded obsession with Iris West was going to go away anytime soon. Oliver didn’t stand a chance.

It wasn’t long after that when Oliver was on a roof on Starling, keeping an eye out for trouble, when something whooshed to his side and started babbling.

Oliver automatically raised his bow, pulling back his arrow, ready to let it fly, and instead of finding an enemy, he found Barry, panting and smelling of charred cloth.

Barry waved awkwardly, still panting. “Hi.”

Olive released the bowstring and it resounded by stinging the hand holding the bow. “Barry.”

“Can we talk? Or can I talk and you listen? I don’t know I just — I just am so confused right now.”

Anticipation bubbled in Oliver’s stomach. Rarely anything came good from “Can we talk?”

He sat on the roof as Barry dropped and folded his legs. Barry took a deep breath and started talking, telling him about the lightning strike, the people left at STAR Labs and him gaining super-speed. Oliver sat there, nearly slack-jawed with awe.

“You’re serious?”

“Yeah. See?” Barry got up and took a millisecond lap around the roof, arriving back in front of Oliver with a gust of wind.

“Jesus fucking Christ, what the fuck?” Oliver breathed, amazed.

Barry grinned at him, that big toothy smile the brightest thing in the open night sky. Oliver’s heart fluttered.

“What are you going to do?” he asked Barry.

“Everyone at STAR Labs things I could use this, that I could help people. Like you.”

“I’m a murderer, Barry.”

“You’re a hero,” Barry insisted. “The Vigilante did what he had to do, and I might not agree with all of it, but you are the Arrow now, a hero.”

Oliver felt himself smile. He wanted to tell him that he had his name on his arm, to ask if his name was on Barry’s but this wasn’t the time. Barry was at the start of something so very important and he couldn’t throw that wrench into his plans.

Barry sped back to Central and Oliver saw him a few times in between then and the showdown with Wells. The time he came the closest to blurting it out was when Rainbow Raider scrambled Barry’s brain and pit them in a fight against one another, it was right on the tip of his tongue “Barry, stop, I love you.”

But did he?

Barry briefly disappeared after Iris’s boyfriend killed himself, creating a vortex right above Central. It ended with Barry resetting it with his speed and Doctor Snow’s husband never coming back out. Oliver once again put his persistent and confused feelings on hold to let Barry heal.

* * *

 

When it got too tedious, this feeling, this crush, this longing, this something. Oliver once again found himself leaning back against a couch, on the floor, with Laurel, drunk. Only this time she had found and lost a Thomas. He just wasn’t her Thomas.

“What did he have?” Oliver asked, feeling almost overwhelmed as his inhibitions faded with each gulp of vodka. “Tommy. What name did he have?”

Red wine dripped down Laurel’s chin as she spoke before removing the bottle. “Morgan.”

“Is that a man or a woman’s name?” Oliver asked.

“That’s actually one of the biggest problems of Soul Marks, unisex names, giving girls men’s names until it becomes a girl’s name like Lindsay, Ashley and Casey and every occupation name out there. It’s given a few gay men and lesbians a headache in their lifetime,” said Laurel. “Do you want to know the statistics?”

“Hit me.”

Laurel brought out her phone, cleared her throat and read, _“_ _In Soul Marks, forty-percent don’t end well or as well as they started, so even if you find your soulmate it’s not guaranteed true and eternal love.”_

“So it’s the same with or without these fucking Marks?” Oliver huffed bitterly, thinking of Barry.

_“Twenty-five percent never met their matches and the remaining thirty-five percent were pretty happy.”_ Laurel continued, choking over a dry sob as she read the next part. _“Some of that forty-percent were a case of Mistaken Matches, where both sides of the couple had very common names like Sarah and John but the ones they married weren’t their Sarah and John.”_

“Two-million men named Thomas in the United States alone,” Oliver remembered. _And less than a thousand two-hundred named Bartholomew._

_“And others were thanks to the mix-up of more and more women having men’s names, confusing both gay men and women into heterosexual relationships until they happened upon their male Tracy or female Tyler.”_ She finished, taking another sip of wine. 

Oliver pushed his sleep up and thumbed the name, sighing. “I think I found mine.”

Laurel spluttered out her sip of wine, spraying it everywhere. “What? How? When? Who?”

He showed her his arm.

“Bartho — wait a minute, that’s a man’s name.”

Oliver smiled at her humorlessly, feeling the need to scream. “Yes, it is.”

Laurel looked from him to the bottle to the Mark and blinked a few times. “Huh, a man. That actually explains a lot.”

“Shut up.”

Laurel shoved him lightly. “Where is he?”

“Central City.”

Laurel’s brows rose. “It’s Barry, isn’t it.”

“I’m seventy-five percent sure. I don’t know what’s on his arm,” said Oliver. “But I’m starting to think his persistence with Iris is because he has her name and is sure that he’ll have her someday.”

“I think it’s because he knows he’ll never have her.”

“What?”

“Remember that I minored Psychology,” said Laurel. “Sometimes people put all their effort into the unattainable because it keeps them from actually giving the real possibilities a chance, because they think that if they try it won’t work so they don’t bother at all to begin with.”

“That doesn’t sound like Barry, Barry’s an optimist who sees the best in people.”

“Barry watched his mother get murdered and his father jailed for her crime, no matter how hard he tried to vouch for him, prove his innocence, no one believed either of them. Then he found out that this man who mentored him, helped him and pushed him to become the hero he was the culprit all along,” Laurel reminded him. “Something like that just might make you give up on taking chances with people.”

“So, what do I do?”

“Quit waiting around for him to make the first move, dumbass.”

“And if he rejects me? If it is Iris’s name?”

“Then come back here and bring a case of Merlot, because we’ll need it.”

They fell asleep on the floor that night, Laurel crying for Tommy, Oliver worrying for Barry.

Team Flash was back in business, Central City had inter-dimensional rifts all over leaking duplicates from all other the multiverse and Barry had given up on Iris. Once it looked like he had gotten the swing of things, Barry told him about an escaped double blinding him and the awkward date he went on with Joe’s new partner and the sheer giddiness in Barry’s voice made Oliver’s head burn.

It didn’t last long, Barry’s thing with Patty, but it still hurt.

* * *

 

The days fell into one another, Team Arrow and Team Flash teamed up a few times. Roy and Thea went back and forth, Sara came back and left and Oliver didn’t know what to do with himself anymore.

He was on a rooftop again when Barry whooshed up behind him, the gust of wind flying a few papers and dead leaves up and around them.

Barry stood before him in his civvies, hands behind his back, rocking back and forth on his feet. “Hi.”

Oliver was unable to stop the smile that crept up his face. “Hey.”

“Been trying to find a good time to talk to you, but I haven’t had any good time to myself lately with the Earth-2 madness and Zoom and my speed and stuff.” Barry explained, he then cleared his throat and stopped rocking his feet. “So, uh, so, how’ve you been.”

“Good, we’ve been having some down time for once.”

“That’s rare.” Barry stepped a little closer. “Speaking of rare. Can we talk? Or can I talk and you listen? Just for a bit?”

“What did you get this time? Ice breath? Laser vision?”

Barry laughed, shaking his head, the corners of his eyes wrinkling. “No, no, it’s nothing like that. It’s a bit more personal, I guess? I just want your opinion on something.”

“Shoot.”

“Do you believe in Soul Marks? Well, of course you do. Everyone has one, but what I meant was, do you believe that they mean anything? That they’re right?” Barry babbled, finally looking Oliver in the eye. His eyes were a rare shade of green, dark without being hazel and without being mistaken for brown at a distance, a true green, a green Oliver loved. “Do you believe that the name, the person it belongs to, is right for us?”

“I wish I could say yes, but I don’t know, Barry,” Oliver admitted, his heartbeat thumping in his ears, anticipation screaming in his drumming beat. “But I hope it is, even if it’s not perfect right away, I hope that’s at least a start to something great.”

Barry got a bit closer. “So, if you had a chance to even see, just for a bit if it works, would you take it?”

“I would.”

“Even if you might be wrong?”

Oliver could now feel his breath, smell the singed scent of Barry’s lightning from the run over here, see the green of his eyes up close and clear in the moonlight. “Yes.”

Barry brought his hands from behind his back, trembling with both fear and excitement, and pushed up his sleeve.

_ OLIVER _

He nearly buckled on the spot.

There it was, there was his name on Barry Allen’s arm, and after all this time all Oliver could do was laugh.

Alarm held Barry’s face, he looked like he just made the biggest mistake of his life.

“Sorry,” said Barry, his edges vibrating, getting ready to jet out of sight. “I’ll go now.”

Oliver reached out and caught him by the arm before he could disappear out of sight and out of his life again. “Wait! Just wait!”

He couldn't believe this. This was finally happening. This was actually happening.

Barry looked back at him, he seemed close to tears. Oliver peeled off his glove and showed Barry the inside of his arm. “You saw it before, didn’t you?”

Dumbfounded, Barry had to shake his head to get his mouth working properly enough to speak. “Not clearly, no.”

“What did you think it was?”

“Barbara.”

Oliver laughed again, louder than the first time. It was a sort of cathartic release more than finding anything funny. He had been holding off for over a year, not saying anything, keeping his distance and minding his own business, and he figured if by some miracle Barry was his soulmate it would be a lot more…dramatic, he supposed.

But life wasn’t like all the rom-coms about soulmates. Life was not that easy or rosy but it wasn’t that horrible either or even predictable. If anything, everything his parents said he would do and had to do, everything he had seen thanks to his time on Lian Yu, his run-ins with Ra’s al-Ghul and his relationship with Barry was that anything was possible.

And so was this Soul Mark.

Hand still on Barry’s arm, he pulled him close and kissed him and it was like someone poured sparkling water in his blood as it buzzed and popped with his nerves. Soon enough, he realized half of the buzzing came from Barry vibrating against him.

When he pulled back, Barry was glassy-eyed and flushed. “That just happened.”

“That did just happen.”

“Can I…” Barry wiggled his fingers on either side of Oliver’s head. Oliver leaned in and let Barry take off his hood, once his hair was bared to the cool night sky Barry grabbed his face and kissed him.

“What now?” Barry asked when he pulled back.

Oliver picked up his hand and after years of staring at his Soul Mark, wondering if the person on the other end of that name thought of him, would love him, if this was the one person more important than himself that wasn't family.

He now had his answer. “Whatever you want.”

**Author's Note:**

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